5 nov. 2018


A Translation of "Ich könnte auf dem Papier jemand umbringen" (Thomas Bernhard interviewed in Der Spiegel on June 23, 1980)

I Could Kill Anybody on Paper [1]

QUESTION: Mr. Bernhard, in Germany it’s become common to classify writers as either rats or blowflies.  Are you a rat or a blowfly?

THOMAS BERNHARD:  A hybrid of a rat and a blowfly, probably.  In Austria we haven’t yet alighted on the idea of calling writers rats and blowflies, but there are certainly people here also who at least go around with [such a distinction] in their heads.

QUESTION: What’s the reason for that; why is the tone in Austria so much nicer?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I don’t know if it’s any nicer.  But nobody dares to call writers rats and blowflies outright…

QUESTION: Even though you have done plenty to provoke your fellow Austrians to do something to that effect.

THOMAS BERNHARD: In order to be reviled as every possible species of vermin, I’d have to go to Germany or be a German; perhaps then I’d still stand a chance of receiving an honorary degree there.

QUESTION: What were the causes of your being reviled in Austria?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Writing on its own was enough.  Basically even in my early poems there was enough to make people call me a skunk.

QUESTION: On the other hand, you have a tendency to view other people [as existing] in a state of decay, of dissolution, you depict them as ailing and having gone to seed.  Your characters have often lost the ability to walk, to see, to hear; the only thing they really can still do is grouse and rant and browbeat their surroundings.  Is your heroes’ illness there as a kind of camouflage, something that perhaps allows them to see and hear even better [than other people]?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, I certainly don’t camouflage my characters; I release them from their cage as they are, and they’re bound to go wherever they like.  I no longer have any influence over these characters; I’m obviously not a very good herdsman.

QUESTION: The most recent of your characters for the theater has a highly remarkable job-title: he’s a “World-Improver.”

THOMAS BERNHARD: Improving the world is obviously an insane idea; the world can’t be made any better than it is.

QUESTION: But you’re having a go at it anyway?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I have a go at it, at making the world a better place, every time I get up in the morning.  A go at making myself better and the world better…

QUESTION: But are you especially horrified by the people who are in power?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’m certainly no lover of power; I don’t care either for individuals who wield power or for groups of people who wield it.

QUESTION: But are you not a lover of chaos either?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Chaos is basically impossible in the so-called civilized world, although I personally am quite partial to chaos in the abstract.

QUESTION: Are your plays and books meant to promote chaos?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Basically I think they are, yes.

QUESTION: And how is that supposed to function?

THOMAS BERNHARD: The moment it functions, there’s obviously no more chaos.

QUESTION: But the purpose of your writings could still be to frustrate power.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I find the word “purpose” almost as repellent as the word “power.”  Purposes [or ends] always seek out means, and with means you also always get power.

QUESTION: A thorough survey of your heroes reveals that they are sometimes—as in the case of your President—politicians, at other times philosophers, at still   other times artists.  Are artists as much wielders of power as politicians?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Artists sometimes have every bit as much power as politicians.

QUESTION: Does their power disturb you every bit as much?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Their power would disturb me if I were ever confronted by it.

QUESTION: Am I right in detecting a hint of self-disgust in what you just said?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Probably.  But it’s not just that.  I don’t see life just as something that’s disgusting…and I don’t see writing that way either.

QUESTION: Your texts are centered on death, disgust with life, suicide.  Do you write to avoid hanging yourself?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Maybe, sure, why not?

QUESTION: You’ve said you’re not a very good herdsman of your characters.  Despite this you’ve recently prohibited the Viennese theaters from staging any of your plays until further notice.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I wasn’t being particularly serious when I said that.  But I don’t willingly commit my characters into the care of people who are habitually cruel to animals.

QUESTION: Have you had bad experiences with the Burgtheater in Vienna?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I have had nothing but bad experiences with the Burgtheater, but I don’t take those very seriously.  It’s just that I don’t want any play of mine to be performed there.

QUESTION: Is the performance of your plays by the Viennese a forbidden act?

THOMAS BERNHARD: “Forbidden act”—it sounds so melodramatic.

QUESTION: Back to matters Austrian.  You have never hesitated to saddle the Austrians with every conceivable form of wickedness.  In an article on the 1977 National Holiday you wrote that your governments in recent decades have been willing to perpetrate any crime against this Austria.  The governments had “committed every imaginable crime, they have finally transformed the exploitation of the vulgarity and brutality of this congenitally somnolent nation into their sole art, which masters them, and which they venerate, and with which they are positively smitten.”  That’s basically a blanket vote of no confidence against every Austrian government.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, against all these people who have gotten used to being in power and abusing power.

QUESTION: You spoke in similarly forceful terms when you left the German Academy for Language and Literature.

THOMAS BERNHARD: On closer consideration, the Academy for Language and Literature turned out to be the limit…

QUESTION: But it seemed that as long as Walter Scheel wasn’t in it you didn’t have a problem with it[.]  Was Walther Scheel’s election a welcome excuse for [you to] leave?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I found the [whole] appearance of the thing unsavory.

QUESTION: Why?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s a difficult question.  Questions are always correct; answers are always wrong, erroneous.

QUESTION: Was it [the election of] Scheel as [an] individual that moved you to withdraw, or would any other president—say, Carstens or Heinemann—have served just as well?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Any of them would have served.  And I would have reacted in exactly the same way.

QUESTION: The same in the case of all three?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Also in the case of Giscard d’Estaing, even if Margaret Thatcher or whoever had come [to the ceremony] at the invitation of the [West German] government.

QUESTION: But at some point you must have participated in the academy’s activities; at any rate, that’s the impression one gets when one reads your maliciously punctilious accounts of the academy’s meetings, which you describe as a mixture of vanity, senility, idleness, and high-rollerism.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’ve never been to any of these meetings.  But [the spirit of] the academy is of course reflected in its publications.

QUESTION: You have refused to allow these publications into your house.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I can’t keep them out.  The postman chucks them in [through the front door].

QUESTION: Are you still a member of some [other] similar academy somewhere?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’m a member of a group of health insurance policyholders.

QUESTION: And of what else?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Nothing else.

QUESTION: You haven’t always been especially consistent; for example, you’ve been known to accept prizes and honorary titles.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Nobody can be consistent; a person will always be able to catch himself out in some inconsistency or other.

QUESTION: In your [acceptance] speeche[s] you have of course repaid the awarders of prizes [with thanks time and] again.  Would you ever again accept a prize, for example the Nobel Prize?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Neither a prize nor a title or distinction.

QUESTION: In your new play you depict the ineluctable ridiculousness of a prize-awarding ceremony.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’ve always found such ceremonies ridiculous, ever since I was quite a young boy of fifteen or sixteen.  And there has of course always been an air of the comical surrounding all the prizes I’ve received.

QUESTION: Is a prize not also always an attempt to muzzle the artist?

THOMAS BERNHARD: [It’s an attempt] to pacify him, [and] thereby render him harmless.

QUESTION: What is it about writers that makes them dangerous?  In a brief prose sketch you write about an author sitting in a theater and shooting people who laugh during the parts of his comedy that aren’t supposed to be funny.  You yourself behave with much more equanimity at the theater, on those rare occasions when you go there.  What’s the difference between the written and the real?  You are of course aware that in Germany we’ve goat truly a truly ludicrous debate going on in Augsburg, because the theater and film director [Werner] Schroeter has fantasized about assassinating [Franz Josef?] Strauss with a veal sausage and has admitted that he’s in a killing sort of mood—much in the manner of your sharpshooting playwright.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I, too, could kill anybody on paper.  But only on paper.

QUESTION: And are you at all worried that some person somewhere could take what’s on paper for a prescription?

THOMAS BERNHARD: There’s nothing I can do to stop that.

QUESTION: Does one kill on paper in order to spare oneself in real life?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I can’t answer that [question].

QUESTION: Your penchant for morbidity shows you to be a kind of romantic writer who envisages a connection between illness and art, between madness and art, between anarchy and art.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, you’ve really hit the mark there.  I think it’s like with dreams; you have no control over the direction your dreams take; if need be somebody can wake you up; the worst things [imaginable] can happen in them, but you have no influence over them.

QUESTION: Do you think the criticism leveled at you is justified?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Every [instance of] criticism is justified, but of course you never know whether it[’s] hit its mark; everybody can say whatever he wants, and there’s nothing you can do to change it; why should anybody change any [piece of] criticism?

QUESTION: How then would you characterize your experiences with [book] reviews and newspapers?

THOMAS BERNHARD: As ranging from horrendous to thoroughly amusing.

QUESTION: Which one was horrendous?

THOMAS BERNHARD: It was really quite a long time ago; it was about fifteen years ago.
 
QUESTION: In other words, it was horrendous because at the time you weren’t yet capable of fighting back[--]

THOMAS  BERNHARD:  [--]because at the time everything was oversized.  When you’re a child or a very young man, everything is much bigger—the mountains, the snowdrifts.  The winters are colder; the summers are hotter.

QUESTION: So Thomas Bernhard has grown more mature, and he has fun reading newspapers, because he no longer feels as much of a need to get involved.

THOMAS BERNHARD: If I were to pack it in, in other words if I were to snuff it, and I could no longer move, I’d probably find it ideal to sit in a coffeehouse with the curtains drawn.  But not drawn so tightly that you could no longer read.  It would be nice to experience the world exclusively through the newspapers.  Then I[’d] stop reading the world except through the newspapers.

QUESTION: [Wouldn’t it be] even better to be lying and bed and also slightly ill?

THOMAS BERNHARD: That would be a great pleasure, I think.  Being slightly ill is of course very nice.  [And it’s nice no matter how ill you get], all the way to [death’s] door.  Even though naturally if you cross [the threshold] and you’re dead, that’s bound to be a great pleasure too.

QUESTION: Reliable reports on that [experience] are hard to come by.

THOMAS BERNHARD: The only [experience], I believe, that’s simply followed by nothing.

QUESTION: Whenever anybody in your books writes or contemplates, he always ends up genuinely suffering from the fact that he has conceived something and that now he’s shackled, enslaved, by the product of his conception.  Is that your [own] situation?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I think so.  When the book, or the manuscript, is completely finished, the period of enslavement is at an end.  A new one begins[—n]amely, of [enslavement to] not writing and not being shackled.

QUESTION: One gets the impression that your plays are also always iterations of one and the same play.

THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s probably quite true.  Because of course the prose is also like that.

QUESTION: But surely the text isn’t as far gone and washed-up as that?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Basically it’s always the same [kind of] prose and the same way of writing for the stage.

QUESTION: But now suddenly there [has appeared] among all your characters, who are all also [part of] a single play [written] by you, a [character] who resembles [Hans] Filbinger.  Surely this character can’t have any relation to you?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I have the feeling that I and everybody else are [in some way] related to everybody.  That there’s even a Filbinger inside me and inside everybody else.  That the Good Lord is also in each of us and so is the girl next door and pretty much every other living person.  Each of us could identify with all of them.  That is the question: to what extent are we stifled and dominated by all these millions and billions of possibilities of people that we carry within us?

QUESTION: That is understandable.  But doesn’t it vex you when somebody interprets your plays so unambiguously and says that in Stuttgart there was a run of a play about Filbinger and the Filbinger affair?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, it’s nonsensical for anyone to say that it’s a play about Filbinger.  Because it’s got nothing to do with Filbinger.  [It’s] just about a person with similar personality traits.

QUESTION: And every similarity is purely coincidental?

THOMAS BERNHARD: …no, of course it’s not coincidental.  Thanks to the newspapers I’ve run into [plenty of] these fossilized Nazis.

QUESTION: Was the little mini-drama for Die Zeit in which a Nazi family are eating soup the first draft [i.e., of the play about the Filbingeresque character (DR)]?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, that was a play I really didn’t want to write in the first place.  Heinrichs from Die Zeit asked me for a play.  I wrote it.  And as I watched it tumbling into the wastepaper basket I said, “Well, that’s enough of that thing.”  But then I fished it back out and typed it up and sent it off.

QUESTION: You have written a comedy about Kant in which the hero, who’s called Kant, is traveling to America for an eye operation.  “I’m bringing America reason,” he says; “America is giving me eyesight.”  Is this the motto that best sums up your relationship with your audience?

THOMAS BERNHARD: It was apt in that I actually had an acute case of glaucoma and was faced with the threat of going blind.  And to stave that off an operation was necessary.  But that was just the initial inspiration for the play.

QUESTION: So [it’s] really just [one of those] bioplay[s] about an artist?

THOMAS BERNHARD: [It’s] no such thing.  It’s a bioplay about a [pair of] eyes.  About the drama of [having] glaucoma.

QUESTION: What about [your] plays about the drama of being in a wheelchair?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Those have their place.  Obviously, just because your head is smashed in it doesn’t mean you’re unconditionally bound to write about heads.

QUESTION: And once you’ve delivered a play up to the people at the theater, do you keep tabs on what’s being done with it?

THOMAS BERNHARD: “Delivering up” suggests vomiting.  And the two acts may be genuinely dependent on each other.  And they probably really are dependent on each other.

QUESTION: But it is of course just a myth propagated by Thomas Bernhard himself that he for example never attends premieres.  He can in fact be seen at premieres, hiding out [in the wings], to be sure; but he does at least take a peek at each of his plays.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Sure, I’ve been to several [premieres].  Sometimes I’ve taken an interest in them, and more often I haven’t.  I’ve also actually walked out on them.  I saw The Hunting Party in Vienna from the start [of the performance] onwards, and from the first word I realized that the whole thing was a washout and dead on arrival.  I walked out in the middle of the first act and went upstairs to the gallery and got my coat from the wardrobe lady, and she said, “Oh, you don’t like it either?”

QUESTION: Have you studied acting?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, that’s what they say.  Nowadays I no longer have anything to do with it, or with music; everything I[’ve] studied I[’ve] had nothing to do with afterwards.

QUESTION: And have you perchance come back to it since?  And you have in fact become so strongly addicted to the theater that you have discovered an actor whom you regard as your ideal incarnation[—s]o much so that you have named a play after him.

THOMAS BERNHARD: With Minetti it’s almost as if I’d discovered my own self.

QUESTION: Even the play written for Minetti about Minetti is the dramatization of a catastrophe, of a failure.  Do you get high on catastrophe?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I am after all a berserker; how can I put it[?]  I obviously want to write well, I obviously want to keep getting better [at it].  But that means I really ought to keep making myself more and more gruesome and [immerse] myself in ever more horrifying and ever darker [depths of] evil, so that I get better [at writing].

QUESTION: Do you have to make an effort to be so evil, so gruesome?  Is it something you actually have to decide to do, to say to yourself, “Now it’s time for me to get nice and beastly”?

THOMAS BERNHARD:  I think I’m evil by nature, and the basic outline doesn’t require any effort, but its execution is arduous.

QUESTION: You once actually wrote that Salzburg was the city with the most suicides.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, I actually just transcribed that; it’s actually been officially determined that there’s a [high] concentration of suicides there.

QUESTION: How do you account for that?

THOMAS BERNHARD: First of all on the basis of [the city’s] natural setting, the way it’s been carved into the rock-faces; Salzburg is really terribly humid…it rains suicides there, in the autumn, at the beginning of the school year; by October they’ve met their quota.  But these are all statistics and uninteresting.

QUESTION: So you found them interesting just that one time?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’d find it interesting if I killed myself and was able to observe myself afterwards.

QUESTION: Unfortunately that’s not possible.

THOMAS BERNHARD: The discovery that it’s not possible is my biggest disappointment.

QUESTION:  What sort of relationship does Thomas Bernhard have with his colleagues, with other writers?  Does he feel a sense of solidarity with them?

THOMAS BERNHARD: With which writers?  With living writers?

QUESTION: To start with, sure, with living writers.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I haven’t a thing to do with any of them.  Not as near as I can remember.

QUESTION: Because you think you’re better off going it alone?

THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s quite hard to say.

QUESTION: Well, we’ve already talked about the Academy.  Can you imagine what things would be like if the Gruppe 47 still existed?  Could you imagine traveling to that kind of annual gathering of writers?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I would have traveled to it fifteen or twenty years ago, if I had been invited to it then.  Back then I certainly wanted to receive an invitation, but I just never got one.  In hindsight I couldn’t care less.

QUESTION: So you wouldn’t go to it now?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, if there were a Gruppe 44 or 88 in existence now, I wouldn’t go, because I have no desire to hang out with writers.

QUESTION: What is it about other writers that bothers you?  Why don’t you want [to be around them]?

THOMAS BERNHARD: In the first place they bother me because they’re also writers.

QUESTION: [So it’s] envy of [your] competitors?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Of course every human being is a competitor.  Among the other things they do writers are naturally even bigger competitors.

QUESTION: But is there really not a single one of them who you think of almost as a brother, as a twin or as a buddy?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’ve got an actual brother.

QUESTION: Not [one who’s] a writer.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’m absolutely sure I have no need of a [fellow-]writer[ly] brother, and I’ve never had one either.  I love Wittgenstein and Thomas Wolfe; these are [figures] who have kept company with me like brothers for decades, who I’ll love with all my heart until the day I die and beyond the grave, to use that wonderful expression.  But [as for] living writers?  Probably I don’t read enough either.  I mean, I obviously don’t read everything that comes out of South America.

QUESTION: Do you read everything that comes out of Austria?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, that would of course drive a person mad; to do that you’d have to read all day and all night, and you can only do that if you’re brain-dead.

QUESTION: When people compare you from time to time to other Austrians, to, let’s say, Handke, what’s your response to that?  Can you see any similarities, any points of contact, [between the two of you]?

THOMAS BERNHARD: [I see] no similarities whatsoever.  Handke is an intelligent lad, and there’s not a single one of his books that I’d be proud to have written, whereas [I am proud] of all of mine.

QUESTION: What about [Ernst] Jandl?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’m completely against [people like him].  They’re schoolmasterly types who can never dissociate themselves from their line of work.  What’s more, they can’t be bothered to make the slightest effort to immerse themselves in anything.

QUESTION: And [as for] other playwrights?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I personally am [quite] enthusiastic about Hochhuth.  It’s ghastly, the stuff he writes.

QUESTION: And Botho Strauss?  You and Botho Strauss are among the most often performed contemporary German[-language] dramatists.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Yeah, Botho Strauss.  I lump him in with Peter Stein and the Schaubühne [am Lehniner Platz company]: in my view the stuff that Stein does isn’t theater.  It’s like a church in which he builds an altar and then installs his [idols,] his God-proxies.  I don’t go to church.  Strauss is like an altar boy in Stein’s [church], and he’s still writing like one even now.  [It’s] very bracing and very charming; I enjoy it enormously, but ten years from now I don’t think anyone will be interested in what he’s writing now.

QUESTION: Does this mean that you are convinced that ten years from now people will still be conversant with your plays to some extent?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I don’t think they’ll have forgotten them.  It seems to me that in Strauss’s [work everything] depends on his diction, his jargon, which is very, very, appealing in an evanescent sort of way, like the smell of lilacs at my front doorstep.

QUESTION: In other words, you’re saying your [own] diction is for the ages.

THOMAS BERNHARD: Absolutely nothing is for the ages.

QUESTION: But you are for at least an age or two; Strauss is on the fast track to obsolescence.

THOMAS BERNHARD: I am for at least an age or two.  Maybe.  Sure.

QUESTION: And [everybody] else is on the fast track to obsolescence?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Well, you know, prospective obsolescence is also kind of nice.  There’s nothing more horrible than sticking around forever.  I certainly don’t care at all to have everything having to do with me survive; I find the prospect of that completely uninteresting; it’s just that [I think] my stuff is more likely to [last longer].

QUESTION: So Peter Stein’s theater reminds you of a church?

THOMAS BERNHARD: In my view, it isn’t theater at all, the stuff that Stein does—velvet, silk, purple [vestments]: it’s all so much churchy paraphernalia.  It’s all so…what’s the word?

QUESTION: Sacramental?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Sacramental.  It really has absolutely nothing to do with the theater.

QUESTION: What about when your [play]  The Ignoramus and the Madman was about to be premiered in Salzburg and even the emergency lights were supposed to be turned off during the performance because they supposedly threatened to disrupt the [intended] effect—was that also [a bit of] church[ery]?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I didn’t witness any part of that imbroglio because I wasn’t present at the time.

QUESTION: But wasn’t it precipitated by things you had asked for?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, it was something that somehow arose among the people who were putting on [the play].  I had no say [in the matter], but logically I was on the side of the people who in the final analysis had been imposed upon there.

QUESTION: Do you enjoy going to the theater?  And what theaters do you go to?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I go to the theater once a year, and that’s [to see one of] my own play[s].  And naturally [the play in question] no longer belongs to me, because the actors and the director have made it their own, in the final analysis.  Of course it has the title I gave it; the characters have the names I gave them, but all the same, for what it’s worth, whatever they say is basically completely different from what I would have had them say, or thought they were saying.

QUESTION: So it’s [basically] been made worse…

THOMAS BERNHARD:…I wouldn’t say that; in certain circumstances it can [actually] be much better, but it’s [still] different.  It’s different and it’s also always a huge disappointment and a huge falsification, which is impossible in the case of my prose texts, because there’s nothing that needs to be changed in them.  Actually even with them [everything] is falsified from beginning to end.  [What] I mean [is that] the title alone [and] by chance remains the same.

QUESTION: What would you say to a theater that you wrote [all] the plays for, [a theater] where you produced [and directed] them yourself, and where you were your own audience?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’d find it infinitely tedious, and it would literally be enough to make me puke.

QUESTION: And yet it would be your ideal; you wouldn’t be disappointed.

THOMAS BERNHARD: From the very start I’d be disappointed in myself.

QUESTION: Can you ever [actually] be disappointed in yourself?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I’m immeasurably disappointed every [single] day.  At [every] instant, at [every] moment[,] constantly.

QUESTION: What does Thomas Bernhard think of his public, of his readers?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I don’t know them at all, and I don’t want to at all either.

QUESTION: Are there no exceptions?

THOMAS BERNHARD: If there are any they’re like what’s her name, Ria Endres, who’s written about me; well OK, there was actually a point to that; she was working on her doctor[al dissertation]; she could just as easily have written it about somebody else, but I happened to be around.

QUESTION: Ria Endres has portrayed you as a male chauvinist, as a misogynist.  And as a matter of fact your women are stupid, submissive victims of tyrannical men.

THOMAS BERNHARD: And in the real world there are also women who are happy with just being allowed to mop up the vomit of social underdogs.  I’m not responsible for Ria Endres’s problems.  Probably it would have done her some good if on account of me she’d go[ne] to Mexico and sat naked on a mountain.  But it’s nice that she managed to get a doctorate out of me.     

QUESTION: Even if you’re not improving the world you’re still helping [people] out, [helping,] for example, Ms. Endres to get her PhD.

THOMAS BERNHARD: One helps a lot of people get their jobs done and, to use that wonderful expression, earn their daily bread: stagehands, printers, workers at paper factories.  Not everything one does disappears into thin air.

QUESTION: So [by] now we’ve ascertained that you write because you have to write, but you don’t really write for anybody [in particular].

THOMAS BERNHARD: Have to, ought to—one doesn’t have to do anything whatsoever; I have to eat, to drink, and, sure, one simply has to keep polishing off all that food and drink; one has to do that, but there’s nothing else one has to do; probably there’s nothing at all one has to do, but it’s a predilection, a passion, I’d call it; it’s [something] one simply can’t stop doing.

QUESTION: You’ve said you live under pressure as long as you’re writing, until you’re finished.  And when you’re finished you live under pressure because you’re not living under pressure.

THOMAS BERNHARD: As a matter of course a writer lives under pressure [Druck], which is of course naturally bound up with printing [Drucken] and printers [Druckern]—but what I said just now was really just another bit of coquetry.

QUESTION: Do you manage to live off of your writing, to live well [off of it]?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Oh, I live the way I like to live.

QUESTION: And were you able to calculate how you’d manage that when you started writing?  

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, I didn’t calculate anything.  I was very calculating, but I didn’t calculate anything.

QUESTION: Does success gratify your vanity or doesn’t it?  Is success an integral part of the life of a writer; is it something he needs?

THOMAS BERNHARD: When a person is successful, you shouldn’t ask him what success is.  And the same goes for someone who’s unsuccessful: you shouldn’t ask him that question.

QUESTION: Can one [get away with] asking you if success is something you enjoy?

THOMAS BERNHARD: I enjoy it immensely.  I’m horrified by failure, even though failure is more useful than success.

QUESTION: So you enjoy success, but you don’t want to receive any prizes.  Is that logical?

THOMAS BERNHARD: In my view prizes have nothing to do with success; I don’t see any [evidence of] success in the fact that some [group of] people somewhere [have] worked up some rationale for getting up on a soapbox about something or other while handing out a prize; where’s the success in that? 

QUESTION: How then do you measure success?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Success is when I send a publisher a manuscript and he doesn’t ask me a bunch of questions about it; he typesets it; he prints it; for me that really is the full measure of success.

QUESTION: So just getting published is really enough for you; it makes no difference to you whether 200 or 200,000 copies are issued?

THOMAS BERNHARD: It’s enough for me if the book is printed as accurately as possible and with the fewest possible number of typographical errors, and without any silly graphical decorations.  And if I can continue living.  All the rest of it I can do without.  I always find what comes afterwards more horrible [than pleasant].


--Mr. Bernhard, we thank you for this conversation.

THE END


[1] Editors’ noteFirst published in Der Spiegel, Hamburg, June 23, 1980.
The interview was conducted by the Der Spiegel editors Erich Böhme and Hellmuth Karasek.  A box in the text of the interview contains the following note from the editors: “Thomas Bernhard lives two hours by car from Vienna and Munich, in an isolated farmhouse in the upper-Austrian village of Ohlsdorf; moreover, the great lone wolf of contemporary literature maintains no telephone connection to the outside world.  At the theater in Bochum the Bernhard veteran Claus Peymann is currently rehearsing a new Bernhard play starring Edith Heerdegen and Bernhard Minetti and bearing the sarcastic title The World-Improver; the premiere is scheduled for September.  [The premiere took place on September 6, 1980.]  In Bochum preparations are also already underway for the performance of his next play, On the Far Side of All Mountains Is Peace [The premiere of this play took place on June 25, 1982.]  In the past year Bernhard, whose favorite themes include the obsessions of the artistic vocation, as well as illness, the experience of pain, and the horrors of decay, has left the German Academy for Language and Literature amid much spewing of bile and venom and declared the Viennese theaters incompetent to stage performances of Bernhard plays.”
The “Play about Filbinger” referred to in the interview is Eve of Retirement; the minidrama published in Die Zeit on December 29, 1979 is The German Lunch Table; Ria Endres’s dissertation appeared in print under the title “At the End of the Line.  [As] Allegorized in the Delusional Darkness of Thomas Bernhard’s Portraits of Men.”

[2] This sketch is presumably “Ein eigenwilliger Autor” on p. 119 of Der Stimmenimitator (a.k.a. “A Self-Willed Author” on p. 70 of Northcott’s translation).






Source: Der Wahrheit auf der Spur.  Reden, Leserbriefe, Interviews, Feuilletons.  Herausgegeben von  Wolfram Bayer, Raimund Fellingerund und Martin Huber [Stalking the Truth.  Speeches, Open Letters, Interviews, Newspaper Articles.  Edited by Wolfram Bayer et al.](Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2011). 

9 sept. 2018

frotter et chauffer les mains ensemble

masser le visage

tapoter le crâne du bout des doigts

tourner la tête de droite à gauche

regarder le plafond, puis le sol

masser les oreilles, les frotter entre l'index et le majeur, tirer sur les oreilles

la tortue: tirer le menton en avant, tourner les épaules

bras à l'horizontale, à la verticale

bras tendus, les replier horizontalement sur les côtés et regarder consécutivement par le trou entre pouce et index

masser épaule jusqu'à la main

masser la paume des mains

masser entre pouce et index

étirer les doigts, tirer sur

mains jointes, rouler les poignets

joindre les dix doigts et appuyer

croiser les doigts et pousser vers l'avant

massage des côtes

massage du ventre dans les deux sens

masser les reins

mains sur les hanches, faire pivoter le bassin

massage des genoux

faire tourner les genoux dans un sens, puis dans l'autre

massage des jambes

sur la pointe du pied, tourner la cheville dans un sens et dans l'autre

toucher un pied après l'autre (jambe tendue) en avant

toucher un pied après l'autre en arrière

et

bras ballants, pivoter le haut du corps en le touchant de haut en bas

30 août 2018

Is there a rhinoceros in the room? One of the earliest encounters between Bertrand Russell and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein involved a discussion about whether there was a rhinoceros in their room. Apparently, when Wittgenstein 'refused to admit that it was certain that there was not a rhinoceros in the room,' Russell half-jokingly looked underneath the desks to prove it. But to no avail. 'My German engineer, I think, is a fool,' concluded Russell. 'He thinks nothing empirical is knowable-I asked him to admit that there was not a rhinoceros in the room, but he wouldn't.'[1]
The crux of the dispute appears to be a thesis held by Wittgenstein at the time concerning 'asserted propositions.' According to Russell, Wittgenstein maintained that 'there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions' and refused 'to admit the existence of anything except asserted propositions.'[2] But what this thesis amounts to and how it is related to his remarks about nothing empirical being knowable and about whether there is a rhinoceros in the room is difficult to determine. For one thing, it is difficult to see how Wittgenstein could be arguing that nothing empirical is knowable given the central importance for his early thinking of his idea that only propositions of natural science can be said. For another, his reported claim that there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions is hard to square with his contention in the 'Notes on Logic' that there are only unasserted propositions. What we need is an interpretation that can make sense of Wittgenstein's reported remarks, while taking into account their relation to his fundamental ideas and his views in the 'Notes on Logic' and elsewhere. Also, it must offer some account of Russell's extreme reaction to Wittgenstein and his worry that Wittgenstein may have been a fool.
In his recent biography, Wittgenstein: A Life, Brian McGuinness proposes an interesting interpretation of Russell and Wittgenstein's conversation, one echoed by Ray Monk in his Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. In what follows, I criticize McGuinness' interpretation and in its place propose an alternative way of reading 'asserted proposition.' This alternative provides us with a way of seeing Wittgenstein's earliest thoughts as continuous with fundamental insights expressed not only in the Tractatus, but in his later philosophy as well. Indeed, if I am right, Wittgenstein's objection to Russell anticipates ideas normally associated with On Certainty.[3]
McGuinness' interpretation depends on sorting out what Wittgenstein meant by an 'asserted proposition' and why he thought that Russell's remark about the rhinoceros did not qualify as one. To this end, he insists that we must see Wittgenstein's objection as expressing a thesis that is more adequately expressed in the Tractatus. This thesis, says McGuinness, concerns the logical composition of the world. His view is that 'the claim that only asserted propositions exist is clearly intended as a correction of Moore's position in his 1899 article [`The Nature of Judgement'] according to which the world is formed of concepts.'[4] According to McGuinness, Wittgenstein's correction is based on the idea that the world consists of facts-facts being asserted propositions-not of things or what Moore called simple concepts. The correction thus seems to anticipate the idea that 'the world is the totality of facts, not of things,' the second remark of the Tractatus.[5]
McGuinness reminds us that the phrase 'asserted proposition' is central to the accounts of the nature of a proposition defended by Russell and Moore, accounts that Wittgenstein is practically certain to have known about. The situation, as McGuinness has it, is that Wittgenstein had already formed an objection to Russell and Moore, which he then attempted to express in his conversation with Russell. In sum, McGuinness assumes that Wittgenstein meant by the phrase 'asserted proposition' what Russell and Moore had meant by it.[6]
The notion of an 'asserted proposition' is connected with Russell and Moore's belief that the content of a proposition is its essential feature and their view that the psychological processes involved in judgments concerning this content have a secondary status. On their conception, a proposition is not a psychic phenomenon as it is for Locke but rather is what Lockean ideas and the like are about.[7] Moore called the entities that make up propositions 'concepts' and Russell called them 'terms.' A proposition, on this view, is what Moore took to be a complex or what Russell called a set of terms. It is not something mental, but rather a complex or collection of subsistent, Platonic, entities.
On Russell and Moore's conception, facts are identified with true propositions. Truth is not-as it is on the correspondence theory-a relationship between a proposition (considered as a mental or linguistic entity) and something else. Rather it is a property of a proposition, now considered as a complex or configuration of terms. Some proposition just happens to be true, and those propositions are facts. As Moore says,
Once it is definitely recognized that the proposition is to denote not a belief (in the psychological sense), nor a form of words, but the object of belief, it seems plain that it differs in no respect from the reality to which it is supposed merely to correspond, i.e. the truth that 'I exist' differs in no respect from the corresponding reality 'my existence.' [8]
What differentiates a true proposition, or a fact, from a false proposition is the quality it has of 'being asserted.' Russell says,
True and false propositions alike are in some sense entities, and are in some sense capable of being logical subjects; but when a proposition happens to be true, it has a further quality over and above that which it shares with false propositions, and it is this further quality which is what I mean by assertion in a logical as opposed to a psychological sense.[9]
An asserted proposition, then, is Russell's term for differentiating a true proposition, a fact, from a false proposition; true propositions have the property of 'being asserted,' which false propositions lack.
McGuinness thinks that Wittgenstein was harking back to this use of the phrase 'asserted proposition' in his conversation with Russell. He thinks that by saying 'there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions,' Wittgenstein was intending to challenge Russell and Moore's basic assumption that there was something more fundamental than facts. On the view being attributed to Wittgenstein, false propositions are not 'entities,' as Russell and Moore believed; there is not a complex of terms (or concepts) in virtue of which something is not; the world is composed of facts, not of terms, concepts, or things.
For McGuinness, then, the discussion between Wittgenstein and Russell amounted to the question 'What complex can reasonably be supposed to exist in virtue of there not being a rhinoceros in the room?'[10] He holds that Russell was of the view that such a complex existed, whereas Wittgenstein in arguing that there was nothing except asserted propositions, was denying this claim. As McGuinness puts it,
[Wittgenstein was] denying existence in this sense to everything except asserted propositions or facts. Thus he had already reached the position expressed in the first propositions of the Tractatus that the world consists of facts . . . [and that] things, objects, or what Moore called simple concepts do not go to make up the world.'[11]
In spite of McGuinness' insistence that Wittgenstein's remark was 'clearly intended' as a correction of Moore's position, we must surely regard his interpretation as conjectural. Other than the appearance of the phrase 'asserted proposition,' there is no direct evidence to be found in Russell's letters to Lady Ottoline to suggest that the two men were discussing Moore's article or indeed any of Moore's or Russell's earlier views. In fact, if we are to discern anything definite on the basis of Russell's letters, it is that Russell was worried about whether the two men were discussing anything at all; what emerges from his reports to Lady Ottoline is not that Russell was alarmed by what Wittgenstein was saying but rather by whether he was saying anything.
These conversations, it must be remembered, occurred very early in their relationship, in fact within the first three weeks or so after they met. At this stage, Wittgenstein's intellectual credentials were not yet clear to Russell and he worries that Wittgenstein may be 'a fool,' 'an infliction,' and 'a crank.'[12] McGuinness' claim that Wittgenstein's remark 'was clearly intended as a correction of Moore's position' does not take into account the serious doubts Russell had about Wittgenstein; it presumes that the framework of discussion between the two men was much more settled than appears to have been the case.[13]
This point is especially telling given that the position McGuinness attributes to Wittgenstein was, as McGuinness himself points out, already considered and rejected by Russell in his discussion of Meinong.[l4] If McGuinness is right, it is extremely puzzling how Wittgenstein's proposing a sophisticated view about the nature of false propositions and complexes which Russell had earlier considered and rejected could have driven Russell to suspect that Wittgenstein may have been, not merely wrong, but rather a fool and an infliction and a crank. Even if Wittgenstein had articulated his position poorly, Russell would presumably have (at the very least) been able to recognize the possibility of a position he had earlier considered.
Another serious difficulty with McGuinness's interpretation is that Wittgenstein states in the 'Notes on Logic' of 1913 that 'there are only unasserted propositions.'[15] If Wittgenstein's remarks to Russell about asserted propositions anticipate the opening remarks of the Tractatus, we must suppose that Wittgenstein changed his mind between 1911 and 1913, and then changed it back again by the time of writing the Tractatus. Besides being implausible, this runs counter to a fact that McGuinness himself uses to support his contention that the early conversation anticipated ideas later expressed in the Tractatus, namely that Wittgenstein claimed that his fundamental ideas came to him very early.[16] The continuity in Wittgenstein's thinking makes it even more difficult to see how Wittgenstein could have changed his mind about 'asserted propositions' and yet have had the same ideas in 1911 and 1918. At the very least, if McGuinness is to appeal to the continuity between Wittgenstein's earlier and later remarks, he owes us an account of the remarks from the 'Notes on Logic' concerning unasserted propositions.
A further difficulty with McGuinness' reading is his failure to offer an account of Wittgenstein's remark that 'nothing empirical is knowable' and how it squares with Wittgenstein's idea that only propositions of natural science can be said. Indeed, McGuinness argues that any conclusions about our knowledge that Wittgenstein drew from his view about the contents of the world is too 'conjectural' and cannot be stated 'without falling into confusion with different and more usual assumptions about the nature of propositions.'[17] On McGuinness' account, then, an important piece of the puzzle concerning that early conversation remains essentially unaccounted for.
Finally, on McGuinness' interpretation, remarks from the Tractatus, such as 'the world consists of facts, not of things' are assumed to be ontological claims, ontological claims anticipated by Wittgenstein in his conversation with Russell. McGuinness' view is that Wittgenstein was 'correcting Moore,' both in the opening remarks of the Tractatus
and in his earlier objection to Russell. This suggests that Wittgenstein, Moore, and Russell shared a similar program: to offer an account of the furniture of the world. Where they differed, thinks McGuinness, was only over whether the furniture consisted of facts (or asserted propositions) or, concepts.[18]
However, the logical status of the opening remarks concerning the world and facts, and indeed the status of all the remarks of the Tractatus, has by no means been settled. Indeed, it is clear that for Wittgenstein the question 'What does the world consist of?' is in some sense illegitimate and nonsensical, and so too are the propositions that are proposed as answers to it. Moreover, Wittgenstein makes it abundantly clear that his aim is not to propound philosophical doctrines, but to show that such doctrines stem from a misunderstanding of the logic of the language.[19] By taking Wittgenstein to have been proposing ontological theses (even if these theses are seen as undermining all such theses) McGuinness downplays the centrality of Wittgenstein's antitheoretical remarks [20]
In sum, McGuinness' interpretation fails to deal adequately with Russell and Wittgenstein's early conversation. Not only does it fail to account for Russell's extreme reaction, it attributes a view to Wittgenstein concerning asserted propositions which is inconsistent with the views that he expressed shortly afterwards. As well, McGuinness presents very little explanation of Wittgenstein's reported remark that 'nothing empirical is knowable' and how this squares with his idea that only propositions of natural science can be said. Finally, McGuinness' interpretation assumes that Wittgenstein's interest lies in proposing philosophical theories, an idea which runs counter to a fundamental theme of his early (and later) philosophy.
As a first step towards clarifying Wittgenstein's objection to Russell, it is helpful to distinguish two uses that Wittgenstein makes of 'assertion' in the 'Notes on Logic,' notes written within two years of that early conversation. In one use, Wittgenstein speaks of 'assertion' when criticizing what he takes as Russell's confusion of the logical with the psychological. He says,
Judgment, question and command are all on the same level. What interests logic in them is only the unasserted proposition.
There are only unasserted propositions. Assertion is merely psychological. [21]
In this use, Wittgenstein criticizes Russell and Frege for confusing the psychological aspect of asserting something with the logical properties of a proposition. For Wittgenstein, assertion isn't a property of a proposition, as it is for Russell, and when we disentangle assertion from the real logical properties of a proposition, we are left only with 'unasserted propositions.' For our purposes, the important thing to see is that Wittgenstein's only use for 'assertion' in Russell's sense is critical. At this stage he would not have said that 'there are only asserted propositions' meaning by 'asserted proposition' what Russell meant by it. For that would presuppose that he thought that 'asserted proposition' expresses a coherent concept, contrary to the argument of the 'Notes on Logic.'
In his second use, Wittgenstein speaks of 'assertion' in the context of determining what cannot be asserted, of indicating what it would be meaningless to assert. Thus Wittgenstein says 'A proposition cannot possibly assert of itself that it is true.' He says,
Russell's 'complexes' were to have the useful property of being compounded, and were to combine with this the agreeable property that they could be treated like 'simples.' But this alone made them unserviceable as logical types, since there would have been significance in asserting of a simple, that it was complex.
As well, he declares,
Types can never be distinguished from each other by saying (as is often done) that one has these but the other has those properties, for this presupposes that there is a meaning in asserting all these properties of both types.[22]
In the 'Notes Dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway,' written in 1914, Wittgenstein again uses this second sense of assertion when he speaks of 'what is sought to be expressed by the nonsensical assertion' of Russell's theory of types.[23]
It is clear then that in the 'Notes on Logic' Wittgenstein thought Russell's notion of 'assertion' to be incoherent and that this belief is related to his concern with what can be meaningfully asserted, with his use of assertion in the second sense mentioned. If the 'Notes on Logic' give any clues as to what Wittgenstein might have meant in his early conversation with Russell, the evidence is thus against his having used 'asserted proposition' in Russell's sense, In fact, if we stress the continuity of his ideas, it is likely that he would have been opposed to the terminology of asserted propositions in Russell's sense. For, as, he said, Russell's sense of assertion is psychological, despite what Russell himself believed, and betrays a confusion about the nature of a proposition. What is more likely is that Wittgenstein was using 'assertion' in the sense of determining what counts as a meaningful assertion or not.
If we follow out the hypothesis that by 'assertion' Wittgenstein was concerned with meaning in his conversation with Russell, an interesting line of interpretation comes into focus. For we are able to see Wittgenstein's objection to Russell as questioning whether Russell's proposition that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' meaningfully asserts anything. On this interpretation, in saying 'there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions,' Wittgenstein is arguing that Russell's proposition, that there is no rhinoceros in the room, only appears to assert something, but in fact does not. Since Russell's proposition does not assert anything, the utterance makes no sense for the simple reason that only propositions that assert something make sense. Russell's proposition about the rhinoceros would thus represent what Wittgenstein called in 'Notes Dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway,' a 'nonsensical assertion,' and what he called in the Tractatus, a 'nonsensical pseudoproposition.'[24]
In opposition to McGuinness, I am saying that the notion of an 'asserted proposition' that Wittgenstein was employing in his conversation with Russell may have been radically different from what Moore and Russell meant by it. Far from Wittgenstein embracing Russell and Moore's conception of the proposition, he may have been challenging it on the grounds that Russell had confused nonsensical pseudopropositions with propositions proper. On this interpretation, he was challenging the very framework with which Russell and Moore pursued their investigations into the nature of proposition. He was not working within their framework and 'correcting Moore,' as McGuinness assumes, but aiming to undercut it.
The main difficulty for this line of interpretation is that there doesn't seem to be anything problematic about Russell's statement about the rhinoceros. 'Of course,' we want to say, 'there is no rhinoceros in Russell and Wittgenstein's room'; 'of course the proposition 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' can be asserted.' Indeed, if Russell's room was at all like ours, what could be a better example of a true proposition? How, then, can it be suggested that Wittgenstein thinks such a statement to be a nonsensical pseudoproposition?
Before agreeing, however, that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' obviously counts as a meaningful assertion, we should pause and consider Wittgenstein's much later remarks in On Certainty, in which Wittgenstein argues that 'propositions' remarkably similar to Russell's proposition about the rhinoceros are nonsensical. Some examples are: 'Here is a hand,' 'I know that there is a chair over there,' 'The earth existed long before one's birth,' 'I am here.' These apparent 'assertions' are grist for Wittgenstein's mill in On Certainty, and are seemingly at least as commonsensical and undeniable as Russell's assertion that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room.'
Part of Wittgenstein's story in On Certainty is that these so-called assertions, which appear to be about the way the world is, are assertions 'about' how we talk about the world, about the logic of the world, not assertions about the world at all. Moore thinks, for example, that he knows that he has a hand and that 'I have a hand' is an assertion about the world. But for Wittgenstein such a proposition is not an assertion, but 'stands fast' for us when we make assertions about the world. He says, for instance,
I should like to say: Moore does not know what he asserts he knows, but it stands fast for him, as also for me; regarding it as absolutely solid is part of our method of doubt and enquiry.[25]
Insofar as Moore intends us to believe that his proposition is something that we can know and assert, Wittgenstein regards it as nonsensical. In his 'misfiring attempt,' Moore is, says Wittgenstein, trying to describe what 'belong[s] to our frame of reference. '[26] That is, he is enumerating propositions that are true only in the sense that if they did not hold, we would lose our standards of correct judgment:
We are interested in the fact that about certain empirical propositions no doubt can exist if making judgments is to be possible at all. Or again: I am inclined to believe that not everything that has the form of an empirical proposition is one.[27]
Interestingly, Wittgenstein harks back to the terminology of the Tractatus and of his earlier writings to make his point about what can be asserted. He says, for instance,
My life shews that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on.-I tell a friend e.g. 'Take that chair over there,' 'Shut the door,' etc. etc.[28]
Wittgenstein thinks it makes sense to say 'take that chair over there,' but that it makes no sense (at least under normal circumstances) to assert 'there is a chair over there.' This last assertion may appear commonsensical but it cannot, says Wittgenstein, be meaningfully asserted. For him, only the former remark can be asserted; we might say that, despite appearances to the contrary, 'there is a chair over there,' taken as a straightforward assertion, 'does not exist.'
There is a relationship, however, between so-called 'facts' such as 'I have a hand' and my saying 'I have hurt my hand.' The former is shown in my saying the latter; that I have a hand is presupposed and forms the 'background' for the assertion 'I have hurt my hand.'[29] But precisely because it forms the background, it makes no sense on Wittgenstein's account to assert or say anything about it.
When we keep the remarks of On Certainty in mind, our initial assumption that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' is a perfectly legitimate thing to say, begins to waiver. The issue for us, then, is not whether we can question the meaning of such propositions, for, as we have seen, propositions like Russell's are exactly the type that Wittgenstein spends so much time criticizing in his later philosophy. Rather, the question is whether Wittgenstein in his early philosophy and in particular in his conversation with Russell was making discriminations between propositions like those he makes in On Certainty. The question is whether Wittgenstein, in his early conversation with Russell, already had a sense of what counted as a proposition, as opposed to what belonged to the 'background' for making propositions. Is it plausible to think that Wittgenstein regarded Russell's claim that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' as a 'background proposition' which Russell had unwittingly assimilated to an everyday proposition? And is it plausible to think that in responding that 'there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions' Wittgenstein intended to point out to Russell that what Russell thought were propositions about the world were in fact not propositions at all?
On this interpretation, Wittgenstein was protesting that 'propositions' about the 'background' are not propositions or assertions at all and that the only kind of propositions that exist are the everyday ones used in everyday life, propositions like those of natural science referred to in the Tractatus, which have 'nothing to do with philosophy' and are the only ones that can be said.[30] An 'asserted proposition' is, on this reading, something like a proposition used in everyday situations, something that can be said to be true or false, to be bipolar, to say something, to have a use. By contrast, Russell's statement, being about the background for asserting propositions in everyday situations, does not qualify as an asserted proposition since it cannot be said to be true or false and is not bipolar.[31]
Wittgenstein did not use the phrase 'background' in the Tractatus or in his earlier notes but he had the means for distinguishing sense and nonsense which lies behind that later idea. Specifically, his idea of the 'Form der Abbildung' or form of representation of a picture and hence of a proposition anticipates his later idea of a 'background.'[32] Stated in these terms, the trouble with Russell's assertion about the rhinoceros is that it purports to represent something that cannot be represented, something that belongs to the form of representation.[33] From Wittgenstein's point of view, Russell has 'inflated' the proposition about the rhinoceros and created an 'illusion of a perspective' in which he appears to be making a claim about the world. While under this illusion, Russell does not even contemplate that his proposition could be anything other than a straightforward everyday assertion.[34]
This reading of the early conversation has the advantage of dovetailing with Russell's report that Wittgenstein 'thinks nothing empirical is knowable.' If Russell took 'propositions' about the form of representation as empirical propositions, then he would have quite naturally interpreted Wittgenstein's objection as a rejection of empirical propositions as such. But Wittgenstein was not rejecting empirical propositions; he would have accepted propositions like 'the chair in the other room is black' as empirical and knowable. Rather, he was rejecting propositions that purported to be empirical propositions, but were not. Likewise, we can make sense of Russell's later recollection that Wittgenstein 'maintained that all existential propositions are meaningless.' Again, Wittgenstein would not have had any problem in accepting 'there is a black chair in the other room' as a meaningful existential proposition. Rather it was Russell's purported proposition that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' that he considered to be meaningless.[35]
We can also make better sense of Russell's extreme reaction to Wittgenstein, and why he suspected that Wittgenstein may have been a fool, infliction, and crank. For Russell would have had, as indeed anyone who has read Wittgenstein's On Certainty is sure to have had, a feeling of bafflement that such apparently innocent 'propositions' as 'here is a hand' could be viewed as objectionable. Indeed, it is important to emphasize how natural Russell's response is. After all, most of us would not have any problem thinking that 'there is no rhinoceros in the room' is true. All that we have to do is look about our room and it seems absolutely certain that there is no rhinoceros in it.
True, in philosophy classes we do indeed raise skeptical questions about such beliefs. But Russell gives no indication in his reports of their conversations that he and Wittgenstein were following in the skeptic's well-trodden path. In fact, Russell differed from Wittgenstein in regarding skepticism as a genuine, if mistaken, position and his reaction would surely have been less extreme had Wittgenstein been arguing a skeptical position.[38] Russell's ridiculing of Wittgenstein by looking underneath the desks in the room seems more connected with his dismissing Wittgenstein as a crank than it does with his rejecting an implausible skeptical argument. Moreover, we must not forget that Wittgenstein's objection to the rhinoceros remark was part and parcel of his positive contention that 'there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions'; this does not sound like the remark of a skeptic. (And remember too that, according to Russell's later anecdote, his objection concerned the meaning of existential propositions.) In short, it would seem that Wittgenstein was making a point about what can be meaningfully said, not about what we don't know.
It is unlikely, then, that what annoyed Russell was that Wittgenstein was venturing a skeptical hypothesis. What is more likely is that he was annoyed - to the point of suspecting that Wittgenstein may have been a fool, infliction, and crank - with Wittgenstein's actually objecting to his apparently innocent assertion that there was not a rhinoceros in the room. On my interpretation, Wittgenstein was questioning the sense of Russell's statement insofar as it pretended to be a species of an everyday assertion. And it is no more immediately obvious why there could be anything objectionable about the sense of the proposition about the rhinoceros than it is obvious that there is something objectionable about the sense of the proposition that, say, 'I know that I've never been to the moon.'[37]
So, if Wittgenstein's objection to Russell was indeed motivated by a concern with nonsense of the sort discussed in On Certainty and elsewhere,[38] there is a significant line of continuity between his views expressed in his first meetings with Russell and the very last days of his life. Establishing this line of continuity, however, requires our recognizing a much greater gap between the early Wittgenstein and Russell (and Frege) than is ordinarily seen. Another way of saying this is that if the Tractatus is to be interpreted as expressing a concern with nonsense, as Diamond and others have argued, we must be willing to take a serious second look at the development of these ideas in his early 'collaboration' with Russell. To this end, it is worth remembering what it was that Russell said Wittgenstein refused to admit in that earliest of conversations, namely that 'it was certain that there was not a rhinoceros in the room.'[39]

NOTES
1 Information about Russell and Wittgenstein's conversation is derived from two main sources: Russell's letters to Lady Ottoline Morell and Russell's article in Mind, printed on the occasion of Wittgenstein's death. The first appearance of Wittgenstein is recorded in Russell's letter of the 18th of October, 1911, and the discussion about the rhinoceros appears in his letters written between the 19th of October and the 2nd of November.
It is interesting to note that in his article in Mind, Russell says that the discussion concerned a hippopotamus, not a rhinoceros. Also, Russell's claim to have looked underneath the desks does not appear in his letters to Lady Ottoline Morell. See Bertrand Russell, 'Ludwig Wittgenstein,' Mind 60 (1951), 297-298. Russell's letters were reprinted in Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1988), 88-89 and Ray Monk, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage, 1990), 38-40. The quotations are from McGuinness, p. 89.
2 Wittgenstein's reported remarks about 'asserted propositions' occur in Russell's letters of the 7th and 13th of November, 1911. See Monk, p. 40.
3 My objective is to raise questions about McGuinness's hypothesis so as to suggest an alternative way of reading Wittgenstein's earliest remarks. I am not claiming to offer a definitive interpretation of that early conversation. As McGuinness points out, there is too little information for that to be possible.
4 McGuinness, p. 91.
5 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicua, D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (trans.) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), remark 1.1.
6 Nicholas Griffin echoes McGuinness' interpretation: 'We do know that Wittgenstein at one point defended the views that no empirical propositions are knowable and that the only things that exist are asserted propositions. Few conclusions about Wittgenstein's philosophy can be drawn from these remarks, except that the second of the them is based on Russell's account of asserted propositions in The Principles of Mathematics.' See Nicholas Griffin, 'Ludwig in Fact and Fiction,' The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives 12 (1992), 79-93. The quotation is from p. 89.
7 It must be kept in mind that though Moore develops his realist conception of the proposition in opposition to Bradley's idealism, his version of realism is also antithetical to the conception of ideas derived from British Empiricism. For more on this topic see John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), 202-204. For a detailed analysis of the realist reaction to idealism, see Peter Hylton,
Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
8 The quotation is from Paesmore, p. 203.
9 Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938), 49.
10 McGuinness, p. 91.
11 Ibid.
12 McGuinness, p. 89. Russell's later anecdote about the rhinoceros conversation sheds light on his earlier misgivings about Wittgenstein. He says, 'quite at first I was in doubt as to whether he was a man of genius or a crank, but I very soon decided in favour of the former alternative. Some of his early views made the decision difficult. He maintained, for example, at one time that all existential propositions are meaningless.' Note that Russell says that Wittgenstein maintained that 'all existential propositions are meaningless' whereas in his letter to Lady Ottoline at the time, he says that Wittgenstein 'thinks nothing empirical is knowable.' As I shall suggest, Russell's later remark about propositions being 'meaningless' as opposed to being knowable, is closer to the heart of the issue, though it is quite likely that in Russell's mind little rested on these different formulations. See McGuinness, p. 89.
13 The conversation in which, according to another of Russell's famous anecdotes, Wittgenstein asks Russell whether he (Wittgenstein) is 'utterly hopeless at philosophy' and thus whether he should go into aeronautics or philosophy was not to take place until November 27, 1911, more than three weeks after the rhinoceros conversation. In response to Wittgenstein's question, Russell says 'I told him I didn't know but I thought not. I asked him to bring me something written to help me to judge.' It would seem that three weeks after the rhinoceros conversation, Russell was still having doubts. See Monk, p. 40.
14 McGuinness, p. 90.
15 Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'Notes on Logic,' Notebooks 1914-1916, 2nd rev. ed., G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe (ed.) G. E. M. Anscombe (trans.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961), 95. Both the 'Notes on Logic' and the 'Notes Dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway' are printed in Notebooks 1914-16. Hereafter, I shall refer simply to 'Notes on Logic' or 'Notes Dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway' followed by the page number as it occurs in Notebooks 1914-16.
16 See M. O'C. Drury, 'Conversations with Wittgenstein,' in R. Rhees (ed.), Recollections of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 158: 'my fundamental ideas came to me very early in life.'
17 McGuinness, p. 92.
18 When I insist that McGuinness has an ontological reading of the Tractatus, I am saying that he thinks Wittgenstein is (at least initially) presenting an account of the nature of language and of the world (and so in that broad sense is similar to Russell and Moore). I am aware that McGuinness differs from most interpreters in holding that the ultimate purpose of Wittgenstein's aims is to show the absurdity of all such accounts. Nevertheless, on McGuinness' interpretation, success in showing the absurdity of philosophical accounts of language and the world must rest on our understanding of the correctness of the account Wittgenstein initially presents. In other words, we must understand and be assured that Wittgenstein's (linguistic) ontology is correct before we can draw the consequence of ultimate 'unsayableness.' In my view, to interpret Wittgenstein in this manner is to admit that he has a doctrine after all, even if this doctrine cannot properly be said, contrary to Wittgenstein's disclaimer about philosophical doctrines. For more on McOuinneas' view,
see Brian McGuinness, 'Language and Reality in the Tractatus,' Teoria (1985), 135-144.
19 See, e.g., Tractatus, p. 3, 4.003, 4.112, and 6.53. This rejection of philosophical theories appears in the 'Notes on Logic' as well as in the 7ractatus. See p. 106 where Wittgenstein says 'In philosophy there are no deductions; it is purely descriptive' and 'Philosophy gives no pictures of reality.'
20 Another way of saying this is that McGuinness has not taken seriously enough the question raised by Cora Diamond concerning how to read the Tractatus without 'chickening out.' If, as Wittgenstein says, his own propositions are nonsensical, it is difficult to make sense of how Wittgenstein can be offering an account of language and reality, whether that account be linguistic or otherwise. ff-Diamond is right, the status of the propositions of the Tractatus is altogether different from what McGuinness supposes. See Cora Diamond, The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press, 1991), 179-204.
21 Wittgenstein, 'Notes on Logic' pp. 95 and 96.
22 'Notes on Logic,' p. 103 and pp. 100-101 (my emphasis in the case of both occurrences of 'asserting' and in the case of 'significance').
23 Wittgenstein, 'Notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway' p. 110.
24 'Notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway' p. 110 and Tractatua, 4.1272.
25 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), paragraph 151.
26 On Certainty, paragraphs 37 & 83.
27 On Certainty, paragraph 309.
28 On Certainty, paragraph 7.
29 On Certainty, paragraph 94.
30 Tractatua, 6.53.
31 In his later philosophy, a statement about the background would be considered a rule of grammar. In this connection, it is interesting to note that in a lecture in the early 1930s, Wittgenstein discussed 'the changes that would be required by accepting the hypothesis [i.e., by taking it as a rule of grammar] that there is a hippopotamus in the room.' Wittgenstein's point is that accepting 'there is a hippopotamus in our room' as a rule of grammar, as something belonging to the 'background' would radically upset our ordinary way of seeing things; it would necessitate, as he says, 'queer alterations.' Though Wittgenstein does not explicitly mention it, it seems obvious that he thinks that we don't accept that proposition as a rule of grammar and that 'there is no hippopotamus in the room' is our accepted rule of grammar, and belongs to our form of representation. I might note that a distinguishing mark of the later Wittgenstein is that he sees propositions such as 'there is no hippopotamus in the room' as playing different roles, i.e., as rules of grammar or as empirical propositions, depending on the context. See Alice Ambrose (ed.), Wittgenstein's Lectures: Cambridge 1932-1935, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 70.
32 The expression 'Form der Abbildung' has been translated by Pears and McGuinness as 'pictorial form' and by Ogden and Ramsey as 'form of representation.' For the purposes at hand, I do not think much importance rests on distinguishing these two translations. I shall use 'form of representation' as it brings out more clearly Wittgenstein's interest in distinguishing the means of representation from what is represented. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2nd rev. ed., C. K. Ogden and F. P. Ramsey (trans.) (London: Routledge & Megan Paul, 1933), 2.15 and 2.17.
33 We can perhaps see elements of the idea that the form of representation cannot be represented anticipated in Wittgenstein's often mentioned use of the phrase 'form of a proposition' in the 'Notes on Logic.' For example, he criticizes Russell for confusing the form of a proposition for a thing. See 'Notes on Logic' p. 105. A full discussion of this idea of its origins in his early philosophy would take me too far afield.
34 The term 'illusion of a perspective' comes from Cora Diamond and refers to the illusion that she thinks is created in philosophy by propositions which strictly speaking are nonsense. I disagree, however, with her interpretation that for Wittgenstein these 'nonsense propositions' must be understood as containing signs that have not been given a meaning, e.g., 'Socrates is identical' is nonsense since 'identical' hasn't been given an adjectival meaning. In my view, Wittgenstein has a more robust conception of nonsense having to do with 'uninformativenem' and misconstruing the elements of our means of representation. Again, it would take me too far afield to defend this view here. See Diamond, p. 196.
35 Some years later, when Wittgenstein had an opportunity to explain the Tractatus to Russell in conversation, Russell disagreed with Wittgenstein's view that any assertion about the world was meaningless. During the discussion, Russell apparently took a sheet of white paper and made three blobs of ink on it and asked Wittgenstein to admit that since there were three blobs, there must be at least three things in the world. According to Russell, Wittgenstein 'would admit there were three blobs on the page, because that was a finite assertion, but he would not admit that anything at all could be said about the world as a whole.' Russell added, 'this part of his doctrine is to my mind definitely mistaken.' It is possible that what Wittgenstein means by a 'finite assertion' is similar to what I am suggesting he meant by an 'asserted proposition' in the early conversation under discussion and it may very well be that this later conversation is going over terrain similar to that covered in the early conversation Russell's remark is quoted in Monk, p. 182.
36 Recall that Wittgenstein says that 'scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical.' See Tractatus, 6.51.
37 On Certainty, paragraph 111.
38 To say that Wittgenstein's philosophy is similarly motivated in this regard is not to deny the substantial differences between his two philosophical periods. One thing we must avoid is the fallacy that Wittgenstein's criticisms of the Tractatus do not contain developments of views first expressed in the Tractatus, though perhaps in an inadequate form.
39 Emphasis added. I wish to thank Paul Genest, Paul Forster, and especially Andrew Lugg for their helpful comments. 


28 août 2018








« Souvent la nuit, du seuil élevé et venteux de ma maison qui surplombe la mer, dans les veilles angoissées auxquelles me contraignait ma fièvre maligne, je regardais les barques des pêcheurs sortant à la rencontre de la lune, et j'écoutais le bruit plaintif des conques marines s'éloigner dans la brume argentée. Les feux des bergers s'allumaient sur les montagnes, les chiens errants aboyaient dans les bois de genêts, la mer respirait doucement devant ma porte. Et je m'apercevais tout à coup que Phébus, blotti à mes pieds, me fixait avec un reproche attristé et noble dans son regard affectueux. J'éprouvais alors une honte bizarre, presque un remords, de ma tristesse ; une sorte de pudeur devant lui. Je sentais que, dans ces moments, Phébus me méprisait : avec douleur, avec une tendre affection ; mais il avait certainement dans son regard une ombre de pitié et, en même temps, de mépris. Ainsi, peu à peu, il fut non seulement mon compagnon, mais mon juge. Il était le gardien de ma dignité, mon porte-lance.

Parfois, quand la solitude me serrait davantage le cœur, je n'apercevais plus dans ses yeux cette expression de patiente expectative que beaucoup de gens lisent dans l'œil du chien ; mais son regard long, lourd, plein d'obscurs symboles. Je sentais sa présence comme celle d'une ombre de mon ombre. C'était comme un reflet de mon esprit. Il m'aidait, par sa seule présence, à retrouver ce mépris du bien et du mal qui est la condition première de la sérénité et de la sagesse dans la vie humaine. Et aujourd'hui encore, peut-être plus qu'alors, je sens que Phébus me ressemble, qu'il n'est autre chose que le reflet de ma conscience, de ma vie secrète. Le portrait, en somme, de moi-même, de tout ce qu'il y a de plus profond, de plus intime, en moi, de plus instinctif. Mon spectre, pour ainsi dire.

Maintenant, je reconnais en lui mes mouvements les plus mystérieux, mes instants les plus incertains, mes doutes, mes épouvantes, mes espoirs. Sa dignité devant les hommes, c'est la mienne, son courageux orgueil devant la vie, c'est le mien, son mépris pour les sentiments faciles de l'homme est aussi le mien. Sa conscience morale est encore la mienne. Mais beaucoup plus que moi encore, il est sensible aux obscurs présages, aux voix de la nature. Son extrême sensibilité m'emplit souvent d'une crainte étrange, où l'espoir occupe une grande place. Non pas quand il sent venir de loin les heures tristes et les idées noires, pareilles à ces insectes morts que le vent apporte on ne sait d'où. Mais quand, étendu à mes pieds, les oreilles dressées, les yeux attentifs, il devine autour de moi une présence invisible, une ombre, un fantôme qui tantôt s'approche, tantôt s'éloigne, effleurant mon front, me guettant derrière la vitre de la fenêtre. D'après les mouvements de Phébus, je comprends si la mystérieuse présence est proche ou lointaine ; et quand il se lève d'un bond, pousse un aboiement féroce et désespéré, puis se tait rasséréné et vient poser son museau sur mes genoux, je sais que l'ombre s'est enfuie, qu'aucun péril ne menace plus mon repos ni mon travail.

Un jour Phébus me fixera avec un regard d'adieu, et il s'éloignera pour toujours. Comme Alceste, il sortira de ma maison en se retournant de temps en temps : dans ses yeux bleus, voilés de larmes, je verrai briller un dernier sentiment de pitié et d'amour. Mon seul ami, le plus cher de mes frères, me laissera pour toujours. Il ne reviendra plus. Je resterai tout seul près du feu, un livre ouvert sur mes genoux, et je n'aurai pas le courage de tourner mon regard vers la porte ouverte. Mais je suis sûr que Phébus, tout à coup, m'appellera de loin. Son aboiement fatigué m'appellera du fond de la nuit. Et je sais que je le suivrai pour accomplir son destin et le mien. Nous nous éloignerons sous la lune, dans l'herbe haute, le long du fleuve, et Phébus aboiera de bonheur ; nous partirons ainsi tous les deux comme deux vieux amis, comme deux frères qui s'aiment, jouant et nous poursuivant dans cet heureux jeu sans retour. »

Curzio Malaparte  Une femme comme moi
éditions du Rocher  Traduction : René Novella

1 août 2018

The Disney Alice in Wonderlands That Never Were


“No story in English literature has intrigued me more than Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It fascinated me the first time I read it as a schoolboy and as soon as I possibly could after I started making animated cartoons, I acquired the film rights to it. Carroll was revolutionary in the field of literature. He violated the serious Victorian tradition by writing Alice in a vein of fantasy and nonsense. In fact, he was a pace-setter for the motion picture cartoon and the comic strip of today by the style he introduced in his fantasy. People in his period had no time to waste on triviality, yet Carroll with his nonsense and fantasy furnished a balance between seriousness and enjoyment which everybody needed then and still needs today.” — Walt Disney, quoted in American Weekly - August 11, 1946
There were three silent film versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1903, 1910 and 1915) and while Walt Disney never mentioned seeing any of them, it is certainly possible that he might have seen at least one of them either when they were released or in preparation for his film version.
However, it is documented that Walt not only read but studied and recommended a 1920 book titled Animated Cartoons by E.G. Lutz.
In the final chapter, discussing the future of animation, author Lutz states: “Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a good example of the type of fanciful tale on the order of which animated cartoons could be made for children. The Mad Hatter would make an admirable figure to pace across the screen. An artist desiring to be the author of an animated story built on the model of Carroll’s classics would need a gleeful imagination and a turn for the fantastic. And he would require, besides, if he hoped to draw characters of a par with Tenniel’s depictions, more than the ordinary qualifications of a screen draftsman.”
This suggestion might have inspired Walt’s decision to title his successful animated series, about a live-action little girl interacting with a fantastical world of cartoon characters, the Alice Comedies and call the first installment Alice’s Wonderland.
The year 1932 marked the centennial of the birth of Lewis Carroll (the pseudonym for the Rev. Charles Dodgson) who authored the adventures of Alice, inspired by the child Alice Liddell. That year, Liddell, who grew up to be Mrs. Alice Hargreaves, visited the United States to receive an honorary degree and make personal appearances. In June 1932, she got to view three Mickey Mouse cartoons on a theatrical screen and was quite pleased and felt that Carroll would have enjoyed the new medium to tell stories.
At the time, silent screen star Mary Pickford, who was one of the founding members of United Artists, proposed to Walt Disney filming a feature-length version of Alice in Wonderland with little Mary playing the role of Alice in an animated Wonderland supplied by Walt Disney and his artists. Pickford was hugely excited about the project, did costume tests for the character, and issued press announcements. The film was planned for black and white, although some of the costume tests that survive were done in three-strip Technicolor. Walt did not appear to be equally enthusiastic about the project and with the announcement that Paramount Pictures was producing an all-star live-action film to be released December 1933, it ended work on the Pickford-Disney film.
“We have been asked to make Alice in Wonderland with Mary Pickford,” said Walt in the New York Times Magazine (June 3, 1934). “We have discouraged the idea, for we aren’t ready for a feature yet.”
Prompted by the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt purchased several projects for future animated features, including the rights to Alice in Wonderland in 1938—in particular the rights to reproduce the original Tenniel drawings. Again, Walt told the New York Times Magazine (March 1938), “Alice in Wonderland should never have been done in the realistic medium of motion picture [referring to the 1933 Paramount film] but we regard it as a natural for our medium.”
Between December 1938 and April 1941, Walt held at least 11 documented meetings with various members of his staff to discuss the possibilities of making Alice in Wonderland.
“I’ll tell you what has been wrong with every one of these production on Carroll," said Walt Disney at a January 4, 1939 story meeting. "They have depended on his dialogue to be funny. But if you can use some of Carroll’s phrases that are funny, use them. If they aren’t funny, throw them out. There is a spirit behind Carroll’s story. It’s fantasy, imagination, screwball logic…but it must be funny. I mean funny to an American audience. To hell with the English audiences or the people who love Carroll…I’d like to make it more or less a 1940 or 1945 version—right up to date. I wouldn’t put in any modern slang that wouldn’t fit, but the stuff can be modernized. I want to put my money into something that will go in Podunk, Iowa, and they will go in and laugh at it because they have experienced it. They wouldn’t laugh at a lot of English sayings that they’ve never heard or that don’t mean anything to them. Yet, we can keep it very much Carroll—keep his spirit.”
Disney storyman Al Perkins researched Carroll and his work and produced a 161 page analysis of the book Alice in Wonderland that broke down the book chapter by chapter, pointing out the possibilities for animation. Some of these suggestions were later used in the final animated feature, including the idea that the White Rabbit should wear glasses because Carroll once commented that he thought the White Rabbit should have spectacles, even though Tenniel never drew the character that way. Perkins also felt that the Cheshire Cat should be expanded and appear in other scenes of the story and that the watch that the Mad Hatter and the March Hare fix should belong to the White Rabbit.
Beginning June 1939, British artist David Hall spent about three months to produce roughly four hundred paintings, drawings and sketches using the Perkins’ analysis as a guide. Hall had a background as a production artist in the film industry including DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927). Story conferences at the time were not helpful to Hall because Walt felt that his story people didn’t understand the spirit of the story. For instance, they had suggested changing the croquet match into a football game. According to the story conference notes, Walt considered this approach at humor as “Donald Duck gags” and that “I think the book is funnier than the way you guys have got it. Get in and study characters and personalities, and that’s where the real humor will come from.”
In November 1939, the Disney Studio filmed a Leica reel (a film of the concept drawings with a soundtrack to get an idea about the continuity and flow) using Hall’s artwork. The soundtrack included Cliff “Jiminy Cricket” Edwards doing the voice of the Talking Bottle (later changed in the final film to a talking doorknob).
“There are certain things in there that I like very much and there are other things in there that I think we ought to tear right out. I don’t think there would be any harm in letting this thing sit for a while. Everyone is stale now. You’ll look at it again and maybe have another idea on it. That’s the way it works for me. I still feel that we can stick close to Alice in Wonderland and make it look like it and feel like it, you know,” said Walt after viewing the reel that over the decades seems to have disappeared. David Hall left the Disney Studio January 1940.
At a meeting in April 8, 1941, Walt brought up the project again, “I’ve been wondering if we could do this thing with a live action girl. Here’s the value in the live girl over trying to animate it—we can animate a girl, make her run around and things—but carrying this story is different. There’s a lot of story here with the girl, and trying to carry the story with a cartoon girl puts us in a hell of a spot. We might, in the whole picture, have, say a dozen complicated trick shots, but the rest of them would be close-ups and working around it. We can get some good characters and good music. There’s so much stuff in this business, we could work around the girl.”
At the meeting, it was suggested that actress Gloria Jean, who was 14 at the time and had just appeared as W.C. Fields’ niece in the film Never Give a Sucker An Even Break, should be considered.
The outbreak of World War II prevented further work on that project. In 1944, the Disney Studios provided the cover artwork of a massive mushroom and the famous caterpillar for a record album based on Alice in Wonderland read by actress Ginger Rogers, who was 33 years old at the time. The album featured original music composed by Frank Luther and conducted by Victor Young. Initially on a set of three 78rpm records on the Decca label, catalogue number 5040, in 1944, it was re-released in 1950 in 7-iinch 45 rpm format and as a 10-inch LP. Besides Rogers, voices on the album included Lou Merrill, Bea Benaderet, Arthur Q. Bryan, Joe Kearns, Ferdy Munier and Martha Wentworth. Supposedly, Walt briefly flirted with the idea of doing the live-action/animated version of Alice with Rogers in the lead.
In the fall of 1945, Walt brought in writer Aldous Huxley to work on the live action/animation script for what was to become Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll. The idea was that the film would star actress Luana Patten, who later appeared in Disney films Song of the South (1946) and So Dear To My Heart. Huxley was a well-known and prolific English writer probably best remembered for his novel Brave New World, written in 1932 about the anti-uptopian London of 2540, where the human spirit is subjected to conditioning and control. Very highly regarded for his ideas as well as his writing, Huxley through his friend novelist Anita Loos, spent some time in Hollywood in the 1940s doing some work on screenplays, including MGM’s Madame Curie, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre although his work was not always credited or used in its entirety.
The Disney Studio agreed to pay Huxley $7,500 to write the treatment for the film. They paid him $2,500 on October 18, 1945 with the balance to be paid on the delivery of the final treatment no later than January 15, 1946. Huxley delivered his 14-page treatment on November 23, 1945. The Disney Studio also took out an option for Huxley to do the final screenplay for $15,000 that would have included “all additions, changes and revisions.” The first draft of the script was delivered December 5, 1945.
Walt Disney had been seriously thinking of diversifying into live-action since World War II had shown him how vulnerable his business was when his talented animators were drafted into the service and foreign markets were closed to his films. It became very apparent that the time consuming and costly process of producing animated features would not supply a steady income for the studio. It was thought that live action could be done quicker and with less investment.
One example of this thinking was the film Song of the South, which was primarily live-action with animated segments supporting the story. Huxley’s script was very much in this same style with the story of Carroll and Alice told in live action with Alice seeking safety from her troubles by imagining an animated Wonderland. Huxley tried to set a premise that Carroll and Alice were very much alike in their love of fantasy, but their personal happiness was thwarted by very stern, no-nonsense people who controlled their lives.
Here is a brief summary of Huxley’s synopsis for Alice and the Mysterious Mr. Carroll from November 1945.
The synopsis begins with a letter stating that the Queen wants to know and meet the author of Alice in Wonderland. She has been told he is an Oxford don and that she wishes the vice chancellor of the University, Langham, to discover his identity.
Langham tosses aside the request since he has other concerns, including the Rev. Charles Dodgson lobbying to become the new librarian. Dodgson loves books and wants to be relived of his duties lecturing since he stutters badly when nervous. (In real life, the Dodo in Wonderland was named after Dodgson who sometimes because of his stutter would introduce himself as Do-Do-Dodgson.) Langham is not inclined to endorse Dodgson for the new job because he feels it is inappropriate for the good reverend to be interested in the theater and in photography. Langham’s assistant, Grove, who knows Dodgson quite well and just considers him a little eccentric tries to plead Dodgson’s case to no avail.
Grove is the weak-willed guardian of a little girl named Alice, whose parents are temporarily off in India. Grove has hired Miss Beale to take care of Alice. Miss Beale is a no-nonsense person who is very strict and dislikes Dodgson because he fills Alice’s mind with nonsense. Huxley points out that it is important to establish that Alice is “temporarily an orphan at the mercy of a governess and an old man who do not truly understand her or love her.”
Dodgson has invited Alice to join him for a theatrical performance of Romeo and Juliet featuring one of his former students now grown up into an attractive and talented young woman, Ellen Terry. Miss Beale is outraged and orders Alice to write a letter to Dodgson informing him she can not attend because of her “religious principles”.
Dodgson visits Terry in the theater and she immediately guesses that he is the author Carroll because he used to tell her stories of the Cheshire Cat when she was younger. Dodgson begs her to keep his secret since he is up for the job of librarian and that if it were revealed he was the one who wrote the children’s book it would go badly for him. He also talks about bringing Alice to the play the following day.
Mrs. Beale discovers that Alice has not posted the letter to Dodgson but hidden it so she could sneak out and attend the theater with him. Enraged, Beale locks Alice in the garden house. When “Grove expresses concern about the severity of Alice’s punishment, Miss Beale assures him that this is how it was always done in the best and most pious families. Grove ends by agreeing, as he always does when confronted by a personality stronger than his own.”
Miss Beale raises the question of her pension that must be submitted to the Bishop within days (or wait another two years for the next opportunity) and Grove advises her that the Bishop was good friends with Dodgson’s father and perhaps the reverend could write a recommendation. Miss Beale’s appears visibly concerned.
Alice is terrified at being locked in the garden house, but Miss Beale informs her that if she does not stop her screaming and pounding she will remain locked in there both day and night. To escape her terrors, Alice starts to imagine that a hanging rope is the caterpillar from the book and that a stuffed tiger’s head is the Cheshire Cat. Eventually, by remembering that in Wonderland there “is a garden at the bottom of every rabbit hole,” she finds a small shuttered window and is able to escape.
She rushes down the street towards the theater but has some horrendous adventures including being robbed by street urchins and trying to escape from a policeman remembering “Miss Beale’s blood curdling accounts of what happens to children who fall into the clutches of the Law.”
Alice eventually finds her way to the theater and rushes tearfully to Ellen Terry and the surrounding performers who are taking a break on stage. She incoherently blurts out her tale. Terry sends for Dodgson and is indignant about the way Alice has been treated. Alice confesses her “system of overcoming fear is pretending to be in Wonderland.”
Ellen Terry says that is the purpose of theater to “take people out of Dull Land and Worry Land and carry them into Wonderland.”
She, eventually joined by the other actors, recounts the story of the Red Queen’s croquet game and the film transitions into animation. Dodgson arrives to take Alice home but Terry insists that Alice stay until she’s had an opportunity to talk “with that old dragon” who has been persecuting Alice. Dodgson agrees and joins in on the storytelling that transforms into another animated segment.
At the point in the animated story where the Red Queen yells “Off With Her Head!” it returns to live-action and the appearance of Miss Beale followed by Grove and two policemen. Grove is persuaded to dismiss the policemen and Terry eloquently convinces Beale of the need to be kinder to Alice. During the discussion, Alice blurts out that Dodgson is really Lewis Carroll. A disgusted and frustrated Grove proclaims that this is the final straw why Dodgson is unfit for the job of librarian and leaves to confront Langham with the news.
Langham has no time for Grove, because he has been informed that the Queen is arriving that very afternoon to meet the author of Alice in Wonderland and he fears what her reaction will be for his inaction in finding the author. Grove announces he can produce the author and returns to the theater. There, without telling them the reason other than Langham needs to see them immediately, he gathers Beale, Alice and Dodgson and takes them in a cab back to the University.
Langham and the other dignitaries are paying their respects to the Queen and, just as Langham is about to admit he does not know who Carroll is, Grove arrives and shoves Dodgson forward. Alice is terrified the Queen will cut off his head, but the Queen is quite pleased. When she leaves, Dodgson finds himself lionized by those who had previously looked at him askance.
Even Miss Beale apologizes and shyly asks for Dodgson’s recommendation to the bishop about her pension. Once assured that this means Miss Beale will not teach anymore children in the future, Dodgson warmly agrees.
As all the new found flatterers cluster around Dodgson they all appear in Alice’s eyes to transform into residents of Wonderland with only Dodgson himself remaining human.
A brief epilogue shows a gothic doorway with the word “Librarian” painted on the door and Dodgson seated comfortably at a table, writing, and surrounded by walls of books. A scout comes in and announces the carriage is ready and Dodgson leaves and goes to a nearby park where children are having a party including a Punch and Judy show. Alice runs up to Dodgson to introduce her new governess who is a “young and charming girl” who seems to be enjoying the party as much as Alice herself.
A stout middle aged woman approaches Dodgson to tell him how much she loves his wonderful book. Dodgson bows, smiles and hands her a printed card from his pocket and walks away. The card states: “The Rev. Charles L. Dodgson takes no responsibility for any publication not issued under his own name”. The woman looks back up to see Dodgson walking away with Alice and other characters.
There was a story meeting on December 7, 1945 with Walt and Huxley as well as Dick Huemer, Joe Grant, D. Koch, Cap Palmer, Bill Cottrell, and Ham Luske. On the infamous day that Pearl Harbor was attacked, Walt was at the Disney Studios having a meeting on Huxley’s screenplay derived from this treatment for Alice in Wonderland with others who were completely oblivious to the historic impact of the day.
Huxley had made some significant changes in the screenplay. For instance, the transition into Wonderland was shifted from the theater to Dodgson’s studio where Alice is looking through proofs of the book for Alice in Wonderland. Although the existing copy of the screenplay has pencil notations that Alice enters Wonderland in dissolves as Dodgson begins to tell her the story. With only the first 31 pages remaining from the screenplay, regrettably we may never know what other changes were made.
Joe Grant suggested Harold Lloyd to play the role of Carroll/Dodgson but Walt preferred Cary Grant. Walt also wanted to play up a suggested romantic interest between Carroll and actress Ellen Terry in the script because “we don’t want him to look like a ‘queer’. I don’t want to see us build up any sex story here…We don’t bring sex into it all at.
”Cap Palmer added, “Just a healthy interest in a grown woman.”
Walt was insistent that the importance of nonsense be made clear.
“We are driving toward another underlying point, which is that, often times, the best sense is non-sense. I’d like to finish the whole thing by coming out with some bit of nonsense that makes very good sense—and the implication would be—‘There, that’s what we’ve been trying to tell you.’”
Walt concluded, “I’d like to work it so that there’s only one heavy in the picture and that’s Beale and we can lay everything on her. Have no other heavy, you see? The thing that makes the whole story pay off is that there is a conflict between Beale and her theory on how children should be handled—there should be no nonsense at all—everything has to drive toward something practical.”
There were vast differences of opinion on how Miss Beale’s villainy should be shown. It was suggested a jealousy of Ellen Terry, pleasure in the merciless domination of Grove (who it was discussed making Alice’s uncle or father rather than just a guardian), inhumane punishment of Alice, or actually discovering Carroll’s identity to use as blackmail to prevent him from helping Alice.
Walt stated, “But to strengthen the whole thing, Beale is trying to bring this child up in a certain way. When she comes back from Dodgson’s, the child has come back with a certain amount of nonsense and a certain philosophy along those lines. If he has said, for example, ‘Going through life with nothing but Sense is like trying to run a race with one foot’. Well, now that’s a heck of a philosophy to give a child—in other words, it clashes with what Beale is trying to do.”
For the final scene, Walt suggested, “Maybe in the last scene we see Mr. Carroll with all these little characters around him and all of a sudden he turns into the little character we want him to be. We can just make a tag ending. Suddenly, the whole thing changes. We make an overlap right on into this fantasy and don’t go into any other scenes. Everybody’s happy. Grove is all right and when the Queen comes you can bring Miss Terry and her mother in. Everybody can be happy while this is happening. It’s a natural place to bring everybody together.”
Earlier, Walt had suggested, “There is this chance to have a scene in the end where they all go on a picnic—there is Dodgson, Grove, Alice, Terry, Mrs. Terry, and the new governess. And the new governess is not so bad to look at, and it is quite a change for Grove, so Grove becomes a sort of comic figure in a way. Or there is another play. There could be a suggestion that Mrs. Terry and Grove become rather friendly. But we could do the same thing through the new governess who is an entirely different character. That could be a very happy setting and you would leave with a very happy thought.”
It has been stated that Walt rejected Huxley’s script because he could only understand every third word,but reading the story meeting notes it is more likely that Walt just felt it didn’t capture what he wanted. Apparently, Walt did comment that the approach was “too literary” for his tastes but judging from the story meeting notes, Walt was actively excited about shaping the story.
Huxley’s wife, Maria, later stated, “this was the first movie he [Huxley] liked doing”.
Unfortunately, a massive fire in 1961 destroyed more than 4,000 of Huxley’s annotated books and documents, including his involvement on the Alice project. Fortunately, the Disney Archives does have some of the story meeting notes, some memorandums, the 14-page treatment and 31 pages of the script written by Huxley.
At the end of World War II, Walt was eager to get into production of full-length animated features and began work on Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. So instead of a live-action/animation mix, Alice became full animation and veered from the original Tenniel illustrations to the more modernistic design work of Mary Blair.
When the animated feature was released in 1951, it contained no elements from Huxley’s work. Audiences and critics didn’t care for the film on its initial release and even animator Ward Kimball referred to it as a “loud-mouthed vaudeville show. There’s no denying that there are many charming bits in our Alice, but it lacks warmth and an overall story glue.”
An article, supposed written by Walt Disney about the 1951 animated feature, "How I Cartooned Alice” appears here (link). I suspect it was not actually written by Walt, but wordsmithed by someone else at the studio and had to be approved by Walt since it was published under his name.
Matt Crandall, who has been collecting memorabilia related to the Disney Alice animated feature for more than 20 years, has a wonderful Website (link). I was happy to see that Matt was asked to be part of the new “Making of” featurette on the latest DVD of Alice in Wonderland but disappointed that they didn’t really let him fully demonstrate his knowledge and insights.



Wade Sampson